98. The Lord lived in so humble a way as scarcely to be distinguished from an ordinary man, and not in splendor as God, that the Jews might not acknowledge Him as the Messiah from externals, but from internals; and for the same reason He was not willing to give them signs from heaven; for if they had acknowledged Him in any other way, and afterwards had not seen themselves exalted to be the lords of earth, they would have fallen back, and so would have become profaners; it was for this reason that He was not willing to give them a sign (concerning which see . . .). That He was the possessor of all things, may be manifest from this: that He fed the five thousand, then the four thousand, also that He gave them wine to drink at Cana, and that He was able to pay the tribute money from the mouth of a fish. But that He willed to seem poor, was for the reason already given.